


A Little Bit of Rain

by thelightninginme



Series: Once I Was Loved [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers 4 speculation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), The Author Regrets Nothing, because how they do it is less important than what happens after, but also the author would like to apologize, defeating thanos in a handwavy manner, for killing off steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 18:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15936209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelightninginme/pseuds/thelightninginme
Summary: Bucky knows; Bucky thinks he's probably always known that this is how it would end - that he'd live to see Steve dead and buried one day.





	A Little Bit of Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I was literally sitting in the theater watching the credits roll for Infinity War, going “wow I can’t believe they killed Bucky in front of Steve again” when I had the thought that come Avengers 4 they will totally pull the reverse on us and Steve will heroically sacrifice himself for Bucky. And while I SERIOUSLY hope I’m wrong, I don’t trust Marvel not to do us (and Bucky) dirty like that, so I decided to write it out before Marvel could. And that’s how I ended up writing a very personal meditation on love and loss that happens to be MCU fanfic. Oops!
> 
> I'm marking this as part of the series I've been working on because it continues some elements I've already established in those fics. You don't have to read them to read this one, just now that I've written Bucky and Shuri as being close friends and I've invented the characters of Bucky's youngest sister and her daughter.
> 
> This was inspired by a lot of different music, including Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” (the Willhelm scream of sad movies scores, because once you hear it once you will hear it everywhere), “A Little Bit of Rain”, which Vanessa Carlton has a very nice cover of and where our title comes from, and “Dark Bird Is Home” by The Tallest Man on Earth, particularly the last verse: 
> 
> No, this is not the end and no final tears
> 
> That we need to show
> 
> I thought that this would last for a million years
> 
> But now I need to go
> 
> Oh, fuck

When Steve opens his eyes, he can hardly breathe.

Though, now it feels as though there is a small child sitting on his chest, as opposed to an elephant, which he takes as a good sign. And he’s no longer shivering beneath a sheen of sweat, so that must mean the fever has broken as well. The last thing he remembers is Bucky, licking his lips, nervous as he always is in hospitals. “Pneumonia’s a real son of a bitch, huh?” he said, not even bothering with a cursory glance at the nurse to make sure she wasn’t paying attention before swearing.

And Bucky is still there, his long growth-spurt (“how’s the weather up there,” Steve will say, to hide how much it bothers him that their differences in physical capabilities are starting to matter in a way they never have before) limbs tangled awkwardly in the chair by the bed. He’s got his head pillowed on his arms, and when Steve manages a hoarse approximation of his name, Bucky’s head shoots up and the fabric of his jacket has worn lines into his cheek. His whole face alights. “Hey, Stevie!”

A lifetime later, a world away, Steve stands in a hut in Wakanda and still he cannot breathe. It’s not an infection of the lungs this time, but something far more sinister, squeezing with every shallow breath he manages.

Maybe he can blame it on the experience of finding _his_ things behind glass at the Smithsonian, or maybe it’s the terrible knowledge that never left him that there was never a body for Bucky’s family to bury, but Steve has come to associate death with the question of what to do with the material objects left behind. But the things strewn about Bucky’s home in Wakanda are a representation not of a life, but a life in the process of being reclaimed, and it would be a vicious injustice to move them. There are books - fiction published both in the early years of their long lives and in their long time away from the world, as well as non-fiction in every topic. Languages, architecture, computer science, history. There’s a laptop, still open, the sleek metal lines out of place in this rural setting.

This is how Natasha finds him after some indeterminate length of time, still looking aimlessly around the hut, taking a mental stock of everything in it, and unable to shake off the childish certainty that if he stands very still, then Bucky will reappear in the doorway.

But it’s only Natasha, with as much naked emotion on her face as he’s ever seen. She comes to stand beside him, joining him in his silent vigil.

“I just got him back, Nat,” Steve says very quietly.

Natasha doesn’t answer, but she does slip her hand through his and rest her head against his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky spent every New Year as a kid on his grandparents’ farm upstate. When he was ten he took the girls ice skating on the pond on the property, and he managed to skate over a patch of thin ice. Never did he forget the sensation of putting his foot down and finding the ground had ceased to support his weight, that sudden drop in his stomach and the icy shock that followed.

The snap was just like falling through thin ice.

“Steve?”

But this time isn’t the snap, because this time when he takes a tentative step forward the ground remains beneath him, strong and solid and real. Bucky stares at his hand for a moment, half-waiting for it to disappear, but it doesn’t, and so he looks beyond the tips of his fingers at Steve who is watching him, wide-eyed and stark white. “Oh God,” Steve chokes, before eliminating the distance between them and crushing Bucky in a hug. And that’s strong and solid and real too.

Bucky drops the gun _(it’s Natasha’s, not his, and that distinction is all that got him through the fight, maybe even more so than Steve’s warm presence or T’Challa’s gentle request)_ and returns the embrace. “Mind explaining what the hell just happened?” he quips against Steve’s shoulder.

But there is no answer. Steve trembles a little in his arms and then drops like a stone, so suddenly that Bucky scrambles to keep hold of him. Steve’s face is still white like the sheet his mom cut eye holes out of for Halloween, when all the neighborhood kids did the same because there was no money for anything else. “It’s okay, Buck,” Steve gasps. “It was the only way.”

No, that second time, the time that he snapped _back_ to the world, the plunge into the ice came a little later. “What’d you do, Steve,” he whispers.

Natasha is speaking in a low urgent voice, both from the comm in his ear and from ten feet away. Has she been there all the while? She summons medics and help. “Cap’s down,” she says, and when she gives Bucky a desperate look he runs his free hand over Steve’s body, but there are no injuries to report, and when he gives her a flat look Natasha just repeats the message, her voice sounding like it’s being crushed through a sieve, until Bucky finally rips out his earpiece and tosses it aside.

“What’d you do?” Bucky asks again, a little more desperate this time, even as he settles Steve’s limp form in his arms. He seems to weigh nothing, like when they were kids in Brooklyn and he was sick all the time and it was a fifty-fifty shot whether or not there was money for the doctor.

“It was the only way. I made a deal,” Steve sighs. “One life for half the universe? It was fair.”

For a second Bucky has no response, just a strangled cry of protest building his throat. “Fair?” he croaks. “Says who?”

“Looks like this might be the end of - ”

“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare fucking say it.”

Steve gives him a weak smile, and it’s those words that do him in, the same ones that grabbed him by his core and yanked him out of the hell he was in, the ones that seem to be driving him towards a different kind of hell. It all comes crashing in on Bucky all at once; he knows this, he knows what to do more than any of the others ever could, even with the blood on his hands and even with his semi-stable mind. Steve toeing the line between life and death is solely Bucky’s domain. “You’re not in pain, are you?” Bucky asks, the tone so even it startles him.

Steve mouths the word ‘no’.

“Good. Okay, don’t try to talk. Help’s coming. You just say with me until then, okay? Jesus Christ.” And that last words comes out partway between a sob and a prayer and a curse. But there’s a flicker of fear in Steve’s face and Bucky realizes he’s got to be stronger than this. “D’you remember,” he says, “when you were in the hospital with pneumonia on my twelfth birthday? And your mother went to that bakery across the street and all they had was a blueberry muffin, so she bought it and stuck an unlit candle in it and you guys sang happy birthday?” Steve’s eyes are full of tears and he blinks once, which Bucky takes to mean yes. “D’you know what I wished for? I wished you’d live to thirty. Guess you beat that, huh?” Bucky tries to chuckle but he just sobs instead, and leans forward to press his forehead against Steve’s cold skin, like he used to, when no matter how high he cranked up the heat Steve still shivered violently under the blankets. This close he can hear Steve’s shallow breaths and it’s like none of it ever happened, not Hitler or Hydra or Thanos.

“It won’t hurt,” Bucky whispers, even though technically speaking he’s never died. Falling off that train and into Hydra’s grasp seems close enough, as does disintegrating into the clutches of a magic space rock. “And I’ll be okay.” Once, his mother caught him in some kind of childhood fib. _James_ , she told him, and she only ever used his given name when she was being serious or she was very cross with him, _it is only ever acceptable to lie to the dying_. He never understood what that meant until right now.

Bucky pulls his head up and brings his flesh hand to rest against Steve’s cheek, and that ridiculous beard that he could never decide if he loved or hated. “You go give your Ma my love. And my folks, and the girls, if you see them. Peggy, too.”

Steve jerks his head in what passes for a nod, and he reaches up a trembling hand to place it around Bucky’s. “‘M sorry,” he whispers. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Bucky whispers back, and then it’s the longest moment of his life, all one hundred years of it, when Steve sighs and then his eyes flutter closed as if he has fallen asleep. It’s a moment where it feels like the whole world has been holding its breath, and then there’s a soft exhale all at once. It was peaceful, it was easy, it wasn’t the blood-soaked violent death that Bucky imagined as soon as he realized the big hulking vision of his best friend was, in fact, not a vision but a real flesh-and-blood man. “Steve,” he whispers, even though he knows there will be no answer.

But then the peaceful illusion is shattered when Steve in his arms begins to flake away into nothingness, and then finally that strangled cry of protest tears free of Bucky’s throat, though there is nothing he can do to stop the demands of whatever deal it was Steve made, the deal that causes him to disintegrate into nothing, and even as the sound in the back of this throat grows more terrified and more animalistic, there is still a small part of him that whispers, _Jesus, is this what it was like for him?_

It’s that thought that repeats itself over and over, drowning out all of Bucky’s awareness of the world around him, up until he hears voices speaking Xhosan. The medics, arrived far too late, though he understands that even if they had arrived right on time there was nothing they could have done. Natasha is talking to them. And then she moves into his frame of vision, something clutched in her arms; it’s a blanket, he realizes, once she drapes it around his shoulders.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he snarls, and for some reason it comes out in Russian.

Natasha takes half a step back. She holds out her hands in a gesture of surrender. “You’re in shock,” she says simply. And then her footsteps depart the clearing where he watched Steve die.

There is shouting in the distance, cries of joy and confusion and wails of sorrow as the survivors find the dead. A chant makes itself distinct over the cacophony of noise. Bucky knows some of the words. _Bast_ , and _wings_ , and _heart_ , or maybe _soul._ A prayer for the dead, or a hymn of comfort for those left behind?

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, wrapped in a musty blanket, with the smell of warm earth and blood and gunfire. Maybe if he stays there long enough he’ll simply be absorbed into the earth and become part of the scenery. He does get up eventually, though, and he leaves the clearing, though as he does it he recognizes he could’ve just stayed until he turned into nothing. He’s leaving a part of himself there anyway.

 

* * *

 

His feet pound the pavement, and the sole of his right shoe, which his mother had just glued back together the night before, comes lose and the rubbery flop-flop it makes against the pavement would be funny if his stomach wasn’t doing backflips.

“Mother’s making your birthday dinner!” Becca had yelled after him, but he just waved her off.

“Tell her to put the leftovers away for when I get back!” he shouted at her over his shoulder, nearly crashing into the stupid Thompson kid who’s too dense to notice when a guy’s in a hurry. He stops for nothing and nobody, not even when he bursts through the doors of the hospital, and the ladies at the nurse’s station all fuss at him for running. No, the thing that finally stops Bucky is when he reaches the threshold of Steve’s room and suddenly there’s a white coat in his face. He nearly crashes into the doctor, who nearly loses the cigarette dangling out of the side of his mouth.

‘Didn’t they teach you nothing in medical school? The smoke makes him cough harder,’ is what Bucky wants to say, but he’s still trying to catch his breath, and his cheeks only grow hotter when the doctor rests his hands on his big fat stomach and says, “Sorry, son. Family only.”

And he never loves Sarah Rogers as he much as he does in the moment when she swoops in seemingly out of nowhere, like the angel she is, and slips an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, drawing him against her side. “Bucky _is_ family,” she says firmly.

The doctor just shrugs and puts out the remnants of his cigarette. “How’s he doing?” Bucky asks the doctor, emboldened by Sarah’s support, and also less out of breath. The doctor looks a little uncertain at how to respond to this request, and Bucky tries to swallow his annoyance. He will be officially twelve years old in a matter of hours. He’s hold enough for the truth. “Give it to me straight, doc.”

The doctor’s expression softens, which is kind of the opposite reaction Bucky was going for, but at least it gets him talking. “I expect your friend will make it, son,” he says. “But - this is his second bout of pneumonia this winter. And how many was it last winter?” he asks, and whether or not this is a rhetorical question, Bucky has the answer anyway.

“Three,” he says quietly. Absently, Sarah begins to run her fingers through his hair, tousled as it is from his long run.

“I think, Sarah,” the doctor says, “it’s time to consider Steve is not going to grow out of this. We have to consider the possibility that Steve’s time with us will not be very long.”

Sarah makes a soft noise of acknowledgment in the back of her throat. A year ago Bucky would’ve spat out a protest, would have insisted that the doctor was wrong, that Steve was so much stronger than all that, that he’d prove them all wrong and live to be a hundred with a bunch of kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. But Bucky’s not a baby anymore, secure in the knowledge that death is something that only happens to adults when they get old. So he just nods once, accepting this prognosis as quietly as Sarah. No, the only thing that makes him even a little angry is that the doctor would word it so euphemistically, as Steve’s mother and his dearest friend did not already know the terrible truth given shape as soon as it was spoken aloud. The doctor hasn’t really moved from his position in the doorway to Steve’s room, only shifted a little, just enough that Bucky can make out Steve’s thin limp hand on the covers. And he knows, with all of the surety of all twelve of his years, that this is how their friendship is going to end. He’s going to live to see Steve dead and buried.

Sarah reaches around with her other arm to embrace Bucky fully, and when he looks up at her tired face he sees her, in his newfound maturity, not as Steve’s mom but as a real person. Written on her face is an unspoken apology. It’s not as if it is her fault that she can’t make her son stronger.

“My shift is starting soon. Will you stay with him, Bucky?” she asks softly. And he understands she doesn’t mean just for tonight. And he understands that this is what she is apologizing for, for requesting that he take on this burden.

“I will. I promise.”

She gives him a watery smile. “And it’s your birthday, isn’t it? I’ll get you something special in the morning.”

 

* * *

 

“I kept my promise,” Bucky whispers to the empty hut. There is no answer, save for the distant bleat of a goat, and his mouth twitches in a smile despite it all. He’d left them with the villagers that stayed behind, the ones too young or old to fight. They swarmed him with questions as soon as they recognized his form coming up the path, and he answered them as best as he could, considering they only know a little English and he’s only picked up a little Xhosan. But even if he were fluent in their tongue, his answers would have been lacking. What’s happened, they want to know, and Bucky really does not know. He knows they ‘won’, and he has the vague sense of time passing in…wherever it was, exactly, that he and Sam and T’Challa and Peter and the rest were, but even now he isn’t sure if time passed out here, too, and then snapped them all back together, or if Steve made his terrible bargain in the span of a few moments.

And Bucky is ashamed, briefly, that his grief has overshadowed everything to the point that he can’t offer a single answer to these people that welcomed him with the utmost kindness.

He had come back to the village thoughtlessly, his broken heart seeking out the last place where’d found a measure of peace, and now he’s glad to be here, left alone, far from the mistrusting glances of Steve’s friends, T’Challa and maybe, sometimes, Sam and Natasha notwithstanding.

And maybe the desire to be alone is the real reason why he went back to the village, instead of staying among the rest of the Avengers, where there would likely have been no shortage of work to lose himself in; maybe for once he doesn’t want to lose himself. Maybe he wants the hurt. He thinks he’s too calm. He thinks he ought to be weeping, hysterical. But really all he does is sit and stare at nothing in particular. Steve’s death is like staring at the sun. He can’t face it head on; it’s impossible. He can only catch it in little glimpses around corners, or in the length of his shadow, or through a pinhole camera.

Despite his determination not to disappear inside himself, time gets away from him a little, and so it’s uncertain how long he’s been back at the village when he hears the sudden chatter of the children. A day or two, maybe? With their high-pitched voices and his sharp hearing he can pick out ‘White Wolf’ - they’re pouting, he thinks, that he wouldn’t play with them, and that now their elders are shooing them away from his hut.

It’s Shuri’s voice that responds, gentle and placating. Bucky steps outside the hut and sure enough, there she is, sending the children off.

“Hi, James,” she says, as she approaches.

“Hi.”

“Your government wants to talk to you,” she says, and for one wild second he thinks she means the U.S.S.R, until he remembers that it no longer exists, and realizes she must be talking about the Americans. “And then everybody started freaking out and going, ‘wait, where’s Barnes? Where’d he go I thought you were watching him, ah’, but I knew you’d be here.”

What, did they think he’d go on a grief-fueled Winter Soldier rampage? This thought must show on his face, because Shuri frowns. “They were worried about you!” she scolds. “We were all worried.”

When Bucky died, Steve dove a plane loaded with nukes into the ocean, so perhaps they were right to be concerned. It is only then that the full measure of her words sink in. So he’s been found out. So they know he’s here. He supposes it was only a matter of time. “What does the government want? To lock me up?” He says this mildly, but he’s only half-joking. If the world was ready to see him punished for the Winter Soldier’s crimes, does it even really matter at this point?

Shuri’s eyes widen in horror. “No! Well, I don’t know what they want, but even if that’s what it was we’d never let that happen. Look, be civil to Ross when you talk to him. He’s done right by Wakanda in the past.” She shrugs. “Also. I saved his life one time, so he kind of has to do what I say.”

He smiles a bit, and he turns to her so that he can make a joke about how if that’s the case, then what is she going to demand of him, but something about the defiant set of her jaw stops him cold. She looks older, in some indefinable way. She looks…burdened. And so he finally asks the question, the one that’s been nagging at him since the village elder grasped his flesh hand and asked him what he could not properly answer. “How long were we gone, Shuri?”

“Almost six months.”

He inhales sharply. “ _Fuck_ me.”

“Well put.”

And so for the first time in the last few days he isn’t thinking about Steve. Instead he’s thinking about Shuri, this brilliant woman to whom he owes everything, that he’s come to love like a sister, and the burden she’s hard to bear these past months. “How’re you holding up?”

“Huh?” All at once, the solemn expression vanishes from her face. “I mean - not great, better now, but - shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

He just shrugs. “I think you know how I am.”

Shuri sighs, and considers this. “That is probably true. Do you want me to leave?”

When he first came out of cryo he did not even know what he wanted to be called, let alone something as complex as whether or not he wanted the presence of another person. And even now, want is the first element of his personhood to go when it gets like this in his head. So he only shrugs, and trusts that Shuri, of all people, will know what that means.

She turns so that they are standing shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the landscape. “Remember when you first woke up,” she says, “and you could hardly string a sentence together?”

A beat passes. “How could I?” Bucky says. “You never shut up long enough for me to get a word in.”

She grins, and swats him playfully on the arm, but her smile fades as quickly as it appeared. “You’re not going to be like that again, are you?” she asks, and suddenly she hasn’t grown up at all; suddenly she’s the child, albeit brilliant, that he’s always caught glimpses of.

“No. I can’t. He’d hate that.”

She nods. “You’re right. Besides, I’ve put too much work into you for it all to be nothing.” It’s the best she can do, but the quip falls flat. “James,” she says, very quietly, and something in her voice makes him turn to her, and when he does he sees that her eyes are full of tears. Shuri leans forward and wraps him in a hug. “James, I’m so sorry,” she says quietly, rubbing little circles on his back. He wraps his arms around her and holds her close, and tucks her head under his chin, and he’s never been as glad for her as he is then.

Even a few moments later, when she sighs a little, and announces, “You smell. At the very least, come back with me and take a shower.”

“I missed you too,” Bucky huffs.

 

* * *

 

The picture on this secure channel is so crystal-clear, Bucky has no trouble making out the bags under Ross’s eyes. Six months of a world cut in half, trying to hold itself together. Ross scrubs a hand over his face, then clears his throat. “Well, let’s get right to the chase. Congratulations, Sergeant, you’ve been pardoned.”

Whatever Bucky was expecting, that was not it, and he thinks at first that surely the connection is worse than it looks and he’s misheard. “What,” he says.

“You’ve been issued an official pardon,” Ross says again. “Any crimes you committed while under the control of the former U.S.S.R are hereby expunged. You’re no longer a fugitive from the law.”

He could go home, if he wanted to. He simply sits there, turning this over in his mind. ‘Gotta tell Steve,’ he thinks for an instant, but luckily Ross speaks again before Bucky can fall too deeply into that hole.

“You could say thank you,” Ross says pointedly. “This wasn’t an easy thing to pull off.”

A flash of Steve’s face when he’d learned the others had been taken to the Raft. So Bucky doesn’t say thank you. “How?” he says hoarsely.

“You had glowing reports from the king of Wakanda, and an entire team of Wakandan doctors and specialists whose degrees, combined, would’ve taken longer to earn than I’ve been alive. But the crux of it was the Hydra intelligence Captain Rogers gathered. I had an international team of experts in law examine that evidence and they all came to the conclusion that you couldn’t be held responsible for what Hydra had you do.”

Bucky knew that Steve was taking on Hydra pockets, but never had it occurred to him why it was so important for Steve to make that his mission. Never had he considered that Steve was doing it so explicitly for him, to help him.

“You didn’t know,” Ross says. it’s a statement, not a question. “About the evidence he was gathering.”

Bucky shakes his head wordlessly. He’ll be damned if he breaks in front of the goddamn CIA.

Ross clears his throat again. “My condolences,” he says. “About Ca - Steve.”

And Bucky can’t help but wonder then, if this pardon would have gone through if Steve were still alive. Perhaps this is them granting him one last favor. “Public opinion swings pretty predictably in this…kind of situation,” Ross says, perhaps picking up on Bucky’s train of thought. “Don’t get me wrong, pardoning you was hardly a universally popular move, but there are enough people in this country that recognize what the right thing to do is. I guarantee you, every kid that’s gone through public school in this country in the last fifty years has written at least one book report or paper on the Howling Commandos. Also, you’ve been trending on Twitter.”

“I bet your friend Stark is real happy about all this.”

Ross’s expression does not change. “Mr. Stark lent us the computers we needed in order to crack the encryption on at least half of those Hydra files,” he says.

Bucky sits up a little straighter. He was not expecting this. “What? Why?”

“I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him yourself. I assume he’ll be at the - memorial service. Of course we’ll postpone until you’re able to make it to D.C. - ”

“Not D.C.”

“Excuse me?”

Bucky sits up a little straighter, too. “Arlington, right? No. Not happening.”

Ross opens his mouth to protest and then shuts it again. “You have something else in mind?” he says finally.

“There’s a family plot in Brooklyn.”

“Sergeant - ”

“It’s where his mother’s buried, for Chrissakes - ”

Ross looks distinctly uncomfortable as if he is waiting for Bucky to leap through the screen and throttle him. Or burst into tears. Or both. “Plans are already underway - ”

“You have whatever memorials you want. You can build a fifty foot statue of Captain goddamn America if you want, but you aren’t burying Steve under it. He’d hate it. God. He’d fucking hate it.”

There’s a long silence, so long that Bucky thinks they’ve been disconnected, until Ross gives one final long-suffering sigh. “Okay,” he relents. “You do it your way.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“You’ve reached Louise and Grace, sorry we can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message!”_

Even after the encouraging beep Bucky sits there for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose, before leaving his sister the most awkward message ever recorded.

“Hi, Lou. It’s me. I’m okay. I don’t know if - you’ve probably seen it on the news. There was a fight. Steve died.” He cringes a little as he says it; even if he cannot bring himself to couch Steve’s death in a bunch of euphemisms, even if he can only bear to face it by looking the whole terrible truth of it dead-on, Louise doesn’t deserve such a blunt rundown. As it is he’s pretty sure this message is belated and she knows already, and she didn’t deserve to learn that Steve is gone from some dispassionate reporter, just as she didn’t deserve to learn that Bucky was alive through false, grainy surveillance footage. “Um, but I talked to - the C.I.A., I guess, and they’ve got it all figured out. I can come home. I don’t have to - yeah. So, call me, if you and Grace still have a spare room. I guess I’ll be here - Wakanda - while everything gets sorted but - I could really hear - ” A loud beep indicates that his time is up. “ - your voice,” Bucky adds to no one in particular.

His tentative reconnection with Louise - and his gaggle of nieces and nephews - suddenly matters in a way it hasn’t before. Without Steve - without Steve who really knows him anymore in this world?

The phone in his hand buzzes for his attention, but it’s just Twitter, telling him what he already knows - that the king of Wakanda is addressing the nation, and for the first time in the country’s history, the speech will be broadcast around the world.

T’Challa was waiting for him once his call with Ross ended. It was the first they had seen each other back in the real world, and for a moment neither said a word.

“Thank you,” Bucky exhaled finally. “Sounds like you got me pardoned.”

T’Challa’s serious expression melts into relief. “I only pushed for Ross to do the right thing. You’ve proven yourself a hundred times over. I expect you’ll return to the U.S.?”

There it is again, doing the right thing. “I’ve got family there,” he answered quietly. “What, you ready to kick me out?”

T’Challa only reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “You are always welcome here, you know.” And he explained the speech he was expected to give that night, that it would be televised and broadcast around the world, mostly because the highest concentration of Avengers was currently in Wakanda. “You are - most welcome to be there. But it is up to you.”

“Well, thanks, but I’m not an Avenger, am I?”

And that’s true, but not entirely the whole story. The message T’Challa must provide will be one of hope and endurance, of a frightened world picking up the pieces, of mourning those lost and holding closer the ones who returned. And Bucky feels like his presence would profane that message somehow. What is he except a symbol of loss? From his famous death in ‘43 to the lives snuffed out by his hands to now Steve’s loss, even if all he did was stand there and keep his mouth shut, how could he not diminish the message of hope and rebuilding that the world needs right now?

Shuri told him once how to adjust the notification settings on his phone, but he’ll be damned if he remembers how to do it now. So he taps the link in the notification and pulls up the livestream of T’Challa’s address.

T’Challa’s always impressed him, even when he was trying to kill him, and that impressiveness is on full display as he speaks with his head held high, flanked by Shuri and his mother, and the other Avengers. But more interesting to Bucky than the content of the speech is the constant stream of Twitter responses appearing below the video.

_omg they look exhausted_

_i thought iron man’s statement was better put_

_i thought thor was in wakanda too? where is he?_

_seriously can’t believe cap is gone_

_i love how none of them can actually explain anything that happened_

_where is bucky????_

“Also, you’re trending on Twitter,” Ross had said, deadpan, as if that was all the explanation needed as to Bucky’s pardon. Shuri had told him once never to Google himself, just don’t do it, because it’s never a good idea, and he’s pretty sure checking for Tweets about himself falls into that category, but he finds his curiosity getting the better of him.

Pretty much of all of the Avengers are trending, actually, but the top tag is a simple one, just _#RIPCap_.

 _Just let them come home TOGETHER #RIPCap #FreeBuckyBarnes_ reads one, followed by four or five crying emojis.

 _70 years and he never bothers trying to escape? y’all in denial #NoWinterSoldier,_ says another.

He supposes that he ought to be glad that Captain America allowed the rest of the world to finally realize what Bucky had always known about Steve. But they saw Steve through the lens of Captain America; pretty enough, bending the light into rainbows, but inauthentic, and so he scrolls through the favorite Captain America stories and photographed makeshift memorials popping up in New York dispassionately, like he’s anyone else responding to a celebrity death - a shame, but not anything to get bent out of shape over.

So no, he’s not up there with the rest of the Avengers, because he’s not going to go up there and pretend to mourn a fiction for the sake of PR.

These sour thoughts are interrupted by footsteps approaching, and he looks up over the edge of his phone at Thor, who sets his axe down with a metallic thunk, and says, simply, “Greetings.”

Bucky glances around, as if to confirm that Thor is actually talking to him, but of course they are the only two in the gardens. The rest of the Avengers have been set up in his part of the palace, the guest quarters where they first installed Bucky after he came out of cryo. Again with the desire to retreat to places where he last felt at peace, or perhaps more simply, where he was left alone. But up until this evening, with the rest of them unselfishly doing the PR he can’t bring himself to give a shit about, it’s been too crowded to be the kind of retreat that he needs. Even now, though it’s just the two of them, Thor’s presence seems to count for way more than one person. Or alien, or whatever.

“I’m Thor,” he offers helpfully.

“Yep.”

“And you are Steve’s shield-brother.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. “I’m Bucky,” he says.

“Bucky,” Thor repeats, as if testing out the name, and then he gives Bucky a toothy grin. “Humans have strange names. No offense.”

Bucky nods at the space on the bench next to him, because Thor seems to have approached him purposefully, and at the unspoken invitation Thor takes the seat. So, you know, now he’s gone from sitting alone in a garden mourning Steve to having a halting conversation with an alien who is also maybe the Norse god of thunder.

Shuri has made him watch a bunch of episodes of some show populated by “scientists” in various states of dishevelment where, as far as he can tell, the crux of their argument is that aliens built the pyramids, and Stonehenge, and have essentially been manipulating human history since the dawn of time. Then again, looking at Thor, maybe they’re on to something.

“He was a good fighter,” Thor says.

“Yep.” Bucky still has no idea what Thor is doing here. Thor’s the popular Avenger. Shuri has shown Bucky a whole Instagram dedicated solely to spotting Thor anytime he happens to show up on Earth. “Why aren’t you with the rest of them?”

Thor shrugs. “Bruce says the world has had enough of people not from Earth for now. I could ask you the same thing.”

Bucky shrugs, too. “Doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate.”

Thor nods, considering this. “It’s not even a proper celebration. There’s nothing to drink.” Suddenly he turns to Bucky, his expression very sympathetic. “You were given the same enhancement as Steve, right?”

“More or less…?”

Thor winces a little. “Then you have the same…” His voice drops into a whisper, even though there’s no one in shouting distance. “ _Deficiency.”_

“What.”

“You know, the…” Conspiratorially, Thor holds up his fist and jerks his head back as if drinking from an imaginary mug. Bucky stares blankly.

“This planet’s liquor has no effect on you,” Thor breaks out finally, speaking low and quickly, as if Bucky has just forced him to explain an embarrassing medical condition, though apparently wherever Thor comes from, an inability to get drunk _is_ an embarrassing medical condition.

“Yes,” Bucky says slowly, still failing to understand the big deal, though he’d be lying if the thought of getting obliterated, just the one time, didn’t have its appeals. “I can’t get drunk.”

“I am sorry,” Thor says solemnly, getting to his feet. “Wait here. Watch that for me,” he adds, gesturing to the weapon on the ground.

Thor disappears into his apartment. Thor’d been given guest quarters like the rest of them, though Bucky wasn’t sure if that was merely out of politeness or if Thor actually needs to eat and sleep like the rest of them.

He returns a moment later with what appears to be a leather wine skin, and two bright red Solo cups. Wordlessly, and with great ceremony, Thor opens the skin and pours an even amount of the contents into each cup, before passing one to Bucky. Bucky takes a cautionary sniff of the golden liquid within. “Mead?” he guesses.

Thor nods. “The finest recipe of my father’s master brewer.”

“This is…from your planet.”

“Yes. Well, no. The recipe is. But the brewing was done on a ship. My planet’s…” He holds up his hand and wriggles his fingers.

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“It’s Asgardian tradition,” Thor says, taking up his seat next to Bucky with his own cup held high. “Mead for the memory of the departed. The drink is sweet, like the memory of the deceased, but also it burns, because death _sucks.”_

“Well put,” Bucky mutters, considering whether he is actually going to drink this literal alien alcohol. Steve would’ve downed it already. Despite the popular mythology that has sprung up about them over the years, that paints Bucky as some kind of bad influence, Bucky was always the one trying in vain to be Steve’s impulse control. “Ah, fuck it,” he mutters, and takes a healthy swig.

He’s had mead exactly once before, during the war. They’d found a stash of the stuff, alongside bottles of wine and champagne, in the commander’s office of the Hydra base they’d just cleared out, and they passed the bottle back and forth with the commander’s blood still fresh and soaking into the floorboards.

At first it’s just a nice hit of sweetness; but Thor was absolutely not joking about the burning part. Bucky splutters a bit, and pulls the cup away from his lips and stares at it accusingly. “Jesus,” he rasps.

At first he thinks Thor is going to be disappointed at his reaction, especially considering he’s just knocked his back like it was nothing, but instead his face just splits into a grin.

Now that he’s had time to grown accustomed to the oddness of the situation, he considers why Thor has specifically sought him to offer him alien mead, and suddenly it hits him. “Your brother died before the snap. And he didn’t come back, did he?”

Thor’s grin fades. “No,” he answers simply.

Bucky nods, and takes another drink. Now that he knows what to expect, it doesn’t kick him in the throat so hard. He never met Loki, but he’s heard stories. “Must’ve been hard,” Bucky says slowly. “Believing in somebody that everyone else says is irredeemable.”

“They might’ve been right. Maybe Loki _was_ irredeemable. I’ll never know now,” Thor sighs.

Bucky had never thought of it that way; that at least for him there were no unanswered questions; at least he had no doubts as to what kind of person Steve truly was; at least he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Steve loved him.

“He did do terrible things, but he also fought alongside me many times,” Thor continues. He gives Bucky a sideways glance. “Not entirely unlike you. Except you were brainwashed and tortured and Loki always acted of his own free will. So. Never mind, not like you.”

Bucky takes another drink. The alcoholic tingle in the back of his head is a welcome distraction. “You’re not like what I expected.”

For whatever reason this delights Thor, and he flashes Bucky another grin. “Neither are you! I watched a TV show about Steve once. They called you a… ‘wild card’.”

Bucky groans. “Don’t watch that shit. They don’t know anything about Steve. All they care about is Captain America.”

His father reached for the bottle often enough that Bucky was never much more than a social drinker, but now he finds its a relief to have it in his system, something to pull him out of his own head a little bit, something to loosen up the tightness in his chest and make it easier to talk about Steve.

Because that’s what they do, as they empty the wine skin between them; they talk about Steve, and the Avengers, and Thor fills Bucky in on the details of their big missions that he’s only heard bits and pieces of. And if some of the silences they lapse into are a little too melancholy, a little too long, well, that just makes it all the better when they get to a funny story.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky wakes the next morning with a headache and a mouth full of cotton. Still, considering what he’d been drinking was literally brewed in space, he counts his blessings that he doesn’t feel worse than he does.

The old Hydra instinct that if he feels physically poorly its his own fault rears his head, so Bucky takes himself to the palace training grounds in the hopes of sweating out his thankfully minor hangover. It’s early, but apparently not early enough, or maybe he just isn’t the only one for whom aimless exercise is a panacea.

Sam is there, doing a number on a punching bag, and when he notices Bucky he stops, grabs a swig of water, and nods in greeting. “That’s the only thing in this place I could figure out,” he says, nodding towards the punching bag as it slowly swings back into its neutral position. “Tell Shuri to make a less complicated gym next time.” He looks Bucky up and down, and then asks, “Do you want to go a couple of rounds?” His expression is carefully neutral, but there’s an undercurrent of defiance to his tone. ‘Just try and tell me I’m no match for you,’ he seems to be implying.

Bucky stamps down the flare of anger that Sam is only suggesting they spar because Steve is gone and Sam is Steve’s friend which means he’s going to try and be Bucky’s friend, too. Maybe Sam is just genuinely looking for a sparring partner. So Bucky just nods and they take up position on the cushioned mats. And Sam is good, there’s no denying that. What percentage of it can be owed to the fact that Sam has always been that good, and what percentage of it comes out of a competitive streak to keep up with the various enhanced individuals Sam hangs out with, Bucky can’t say for sure.

Either way, after Sam’s couple of rounds, they’re both breathing heavy and silent on the mats. Somehow what was supposed to be a friendly round of sparring is suffused with something different, something darker. It’s easy to blame it on the lack of Steve’s smoothing presence.

“You were holding back,” Sam says, and there’s an undercurrent of real anger.

Bucky has propped himself up against the wall. He tips his head back and closes his eyes. “Can we not do this right now?” Sam doesn’t answer, but after a moment Bucky hears him exhale loudly.

“You have a vibranium arm. Unfair advantage,” Sam says eventually, this time his tone free of venom. “What isn’t made of vibranium? Is there vibranium in these mats? Is that why they’re so comfortable?” When Bucky opens his eyes, Sam is starfished out on the mat, staring up at the ceiling. “Hey man, congratulations, by the way. On the pardon,” Sam adds, still staring at the ceiling.

It’s genuine, and Bucky isn’t sure what to do with it. “Did you know that’s why he was doing it?” he asks eventually.

“Not at first,” Sam answers. “But after the first couple of times kicking the shit out of Hydra goons, and Steve kept going on about, he was going to sweep their computers for anything useful…” He shrugs. “I figured it out.”

“I didn’t ask him to,” Bucky says, in little more than a whisper.

“I know. It’s why he never told you what he was up to. Because he knew you’d tell him to cut it out.”

“He wouldn’t have listened.”

Sam chuckles humorlessly and props himself up on his elbows and looks over at Bucky. “Probably not. I tried, man. They don’t put that in the fifth grade history books, you know? ‘Captain America was a real stubborn bastard’.”

Bucky returns Sam’s gaze; studies him as if seeing him for the first time. At least one other person in this world misses _Steve_ and not Captain America.

“You look like you’re holding up okay,” Sam says, a little cautiously.

It’s Bucky’s turn to let out a humorless laugh and he goes back to tipping his head against the wall, eyes shut. “Don’t do that. Don’t - I’m not one of your vets.”

“I know you aren’t. We’re just _talking_. Don’t get all touchy. You are _way_ above my pay grade. Always have been.”

“Are you holding up?” Bucky asks, and as soon as the words have left him he feels a flash of shame at their sneering tone.

“I guess,” Sam murmurs.

Bucky was not expecting that; he was expecting to get snarked at right back. Because up until this point that has been the tacit understanding between them, even trapped together inside a magic space rock: that they might not particularly like each other, but they were each important to Steve, and so they were going to have to get along the best they could. No, Bucky was definitely not expecting those two quiet words, suffused with grief, and whatever else snark he wanted to fire at Sam dies in his throat.

“Thank you,” Bucky says softly.

Sam’s eyes snap open; now it’s his turn to react in surprise to such a naked display of emotion. “For what?”

“Because I couldn’t have - I felt like I was supposed to be there but I couldn’t be. But I knew you were watching his back. So, thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I mean…you’re welcome. But it - it’s not like I did anything you wouldn’t have done. Probably shouldn’t have called him a stubborn bastard, though,” Sam adds ruefully.

Bucky shrugs. “It’s okay when it’s true.” What was it Thor had said the night before? “It’s just - this just really fucking sucks.”

Sam lays back down on the mat, this time with his hands folded over his stomach, pointedly ignoring the way Bucky’s voice cracked on that last word. “Yep,” he drawls. “It fucking sucks.”

“I don’t know what to do.” And there’s a part of him that still can’t believe he’s saying these things, even showing this much to Sam, of all people, but it’s easier to say these things to someone else that knew Steve for himself, someone else that didn’t give a shit about Captain America.

“You’re just going to have to figure that one out,” Sam answers, even though it was a rhetorical question. “And it’s going to fucking suck tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, but every day it’s going to suck just a little bit less, until it shrinks down into something that you can live with.”

Something he can live with. “But it won’t go away.”

“Nope.” Sam sounds so nonchalant when he says it, like he’s relaying a fact as immutable as the color of the sky. Bucky decides to let the moment lie, and he doesn’t ask Sam how he knows.

 

* * *

 

 

He returns to the village to pack the rest of his things. Well, most of the rest of it, because as Bucky combs through the hut’s contents he marvels at how much stuff he’s actually managed to collect in his time here. Maybe he’ll turn out like one of those disturbed people on the show that Shuri showed him, with people that collect so much stuff you can’t even see the floor. They always seem to have endured some kind of awful trauma, too.

And he knows he’s being ridiculous as he picks up every object he’s come to own in the last year or so and scrutinizes whether it’s worth taking right now or not, but after having nothing to call his own for so long, and to have lost the only person in the world that felt like his, these mere objects take on an outsize importance.

That’s how Natasha finds him, a book on Javascript in one hand and a book on learning French in the other, trying to decide which one goes back to the States with him and which one stays in Wakanda until he can have the rest of it shipped over.

“That looks fascinating,” she deadpans, but only after telegraphing her movements so as not to startle him.

Bucky rocks back on his heels and glances back at her. “What’re you doing here?” It comes out more accusatory than he means for it to, and is he imagining it, or is that a glimmer of hurt in her eyes?

She shrugs gracefully. “Wanted to come back and see what the fuss was about this place. Steve made it sound magical. Kind of smells like a barn, though.”

“I raise _goats_ , not roses,” he deadpans, and then parses the rest of her words. “Magical? And when were you here the first time?”

“He just talked it up, I guess. Whenever he needed a break this is where he wanted to be. And the first time I was here, was after you died, and I found Steve here.”

He cringes a little at this last part, then ducks his head back to his bag, hoping she hasn’t noticed. He struggles to swallow a sudden surge of annoyance at her presence. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says.

“What, exactly, am I doing?”

“Checking up on me. For Steve’s sake.”

She sits, uninvited, on the edge of Bucky’s bed and scoffs a little. “Who says I’m doing anything for Steve? Maybe I’m just here because I like hanging out with my fellow former U.S.S.R-brainwashed assassins. Steve must’ve told you, or you must’ve figured it out for yourself,” she adds, when this quip does not generate the response she was apparently looking for.

“I know who you are.”

“We could’ve met before,” she says, like it’s just a funny coincidence, like they went to the same school or worked at the same summer job, and not like they were tortured by the same government.

“I don’t think we did.” He frowns. Or did they, and she’s testing him, though to what end he has no idea.

“No, I don’t think we did either,” Natasha answers. “Unless you count the time you shot me.”

Bucky sits back on his heels and looks at her, abandoning his work since Natasha is, for some reason, doing her best to be distracting. “What do you want, Natasha?” he asks, this time with no venom, only a genuine question.

She’s leaning forward with her hands braced on the edge of the bed on either side of her. Does she ever truly relax, or is she like him, perpetually wound up, ready to spring at a moment’s notice, unable to to truly leave behind some of those parts they programmed into her? She seems to be considering the question, as if she doesn’t truly know what she is doing here either, though Bucky finds that hard to believe, that Natasha would ever do something without the utmost deliberation. Then again, maybe that’s just the persona she likes to put up.

“Steve lost you twice,” she says slowly, “and I saw it destroy him both times. So…I don’t know. What about you? Are you destroyed?”

For all of her quips about the Soviet Union, she’s not necessarily wrong about the two of them - they do share more than he shares with any of the others. But as their eyes meet that afternoon in the hut, he realizes it’s more than that. She was there, when Steve died, and now she’s seen a part of Bucky - and of Steve too, really - that no one else ever has. She was there, and so something unspoken has passed between the two of them and tied them together in a way that not even their shared pasts ever could have. “You were there,” he says finally. “What do you think?”

Natasha nods and leans back, apparently satisfied with this answer. “Can I give you a bit of friendly advice? For when you go back?”

He expects her to go on anyway, but when she stays silent Bucky nods. "The press is going to hound you,” she says.

That was hardly the advice he was expecting. "Okay? Aren't they going to do that to everybody?"

"Maybe. But not the way they'll do it to you. They'll ask ridiculous invasive questions. They'll try to piss you off. They'll want to get a rise out of you. Don't give them the satisfaction. It makes for a much better story if you turn out to be a monster instead of a just a person."

The rational part of him knows she's only trying to help. But the grieving part of him hates the reminder that his biggest defender is gone. "Bet you're glad they'll lay off you now," he snaps.

She just gives him an even inscrutable expression. But it’s Natasha that breaks eye contact first. She is just full of surprises today. "He said...he said we don't trade lives," she says to the floor.

“He actually said that?” Bucky shrugs. “Stubborn bastard once crashed a plane full of nukes into the ocean. Do as I say, not as I do."

“Guess it depends on whose life we’re talking about.” She says it so softly that as soon as the words have left her she gets to her feet as if to distract from her emotion. “Hope you know how lucky you are, Barnes.”

“You don’t really know me, Natasha,” he says, just as quietly, because it’s not really an accusation, just an observation.

“Maybe not,” she says, back to being as collected as ever, though she pauses to lay a hand on his shoulder as she goes to leave. “But I like to think I knew Steve.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

It’s Grace that meets him at the air field, her expression grave, and although Bucky knows that his niece has never been entirely sure about him, it’s gratifying when she gives him a tight smile and pulls him into a brief hug, before they’re ushered into a big black SUV with tinted windows.

Natasha was not kidding about the reporters, and the reason for Grace’s sour expression immediately becomes obvious when the driver pulls up to Lou and Grace’s brownstone in Brooklyn and there’s already a swarm of reporters crowded on the sidewalk, heedless of the cranky New Yorkers that brush past them.

It’s not the homecoming he imagined, when he allowed himself to imagine it at all. It was much kinder in his mind, much quieter - though not _quiet_ , otherwise it wouldn’t have been New York - suffused with familiar sights and smells. As it is, he and Grace step out of the car and a camera flashes in his face. Grace curses under her breath. No wonder her hair looks a little grayer than the last time Bucky saw her. She keeps her hand flat against the small of his back as they hustle up the front sidewalk. They shout his name, they yell Steve’s name, they call him Sergeant, they call him Winter Soldier. Grace turns her head as if to tell them off. “Don’t,” Bucky mutters through clenched teeth.

Grace’s hands are shaking a little as she fumbles with the lock, but then all at once the door swings open from the other side and he’s wrapped in someone’s arms and the air smells vaguely sweet like he thought it would when he finally made it home.

“Oh, Bucky,” his baby sister Louise chokes out, one thin arm wrapped around his back and the other behind his neck, pressing him against her bony shoulder. Behind them, Grace sighs shakily and there’s a click as she shuts and locks the door behind them. “I’m so sorry,” Louise whispers. “He loved you so much.”

He can’t speak at first. “He loved you too,” Bucky manages against her shoulder.

“When he told me you’d gone again…oh Bucky, and Jim called me sobbing, his sweet girl Annie went too, and my best friend Cora from church.”

“I know, Lou, it’s okay,” he says, even though now he’s crying too. “I saw them. It’s okay, Lou, it didn’t hurt.”

“You _saved_ all of us,” Louise sobs, and they stand like that for a while, holding each other and weeping, the last two of them, remembering when there used to be five of them. Louise makes a shuddering noise in the back of her throat and she sways just a bit in Bucky’s arms, so wordlessly he breaks away to guide the two of them to sit facing each other on the floral couch in the middle of the room, ignoring Louise’s protests that she feels fine, only it’s all this crying wearing her out…

Grace looks bemused, the way anyone would when confronted with their octogenarian mother and centenarian uncle falling apart all over each other in the living room. "You guys want a cup of tea? Coffee? Whiskey?" Without waiting for an answer Grace tugs the end of her short ponytail and disappears down the darkened hallway to the kitchen. "You know what, I'll just make a pot of everything," she says over her shoulder.

The commotion outside has set him on edge more than he thought he would. He closes his eyes and he can still hear their muffled voices, but Louise's quiet sniffling is much closer, so he focuses on that. The house is cool and dark, like any proper row home, especially with the curtains in the front windows drawn to block the prying eyes outside. When he opens his eyes, Louise is dabbing at hers with a handkerchief.

"I'm sorry, about all of that," he says, jerking his head towards the front door.

"Oh hush," Louise answers, tucking the handkerchief back into her pocket. "It's not your fault. Besides, it's nothing new for us. Becca chased them off the front porch once with a broom." All humor disappears abruptly from her voice, and she says, "Dealing with a few nosy reporters is more than a fair deal to have you home."

A fair deal. He knows she means nothing by it, but a wave of nausea passes through him regardless. It doesn't feel right to call it coming home without Steve. When he doesn't say anything, Louise's worried expression deepens and she leans forward to take his hand.

"Sorry," he manages, "it's not...I missed you, it's just..."

"I know, Bucky. You don't have to explain. I’m just glad you’re here. And I’m glad the service is going to be here, too."

“I had to fight for that one a little bit,” he admits, and Louise nods. “They wanted…a whole big thing at Arlington, on TV.”

“I’m glad you stopped it.” She sighs. “Bucky, I can’t decide what I want to say. If I should speak. Hm, we could go up together.”

Bucky jerks his hand away and tries to quell the irrational wave of panic. “Lou, I’m not - I don’t want to go up there in front of all those people. They’re not coming for him, or me. They’re coming for - for a story.”

“I thought that was the point of having the funeral here.”

“Yeah, but - ”

“Bucky.” God, she sounds so much like their mother, soft and gentle but somehow also leaving him no choice but to shut up and listen, so he does. “It’s okay,” Louise says, “if you can’t do it.”

If they were children he’d take it as a dare. If they were children he’d snap at her for the insinuation that there was something she could do that he couldn’t. But he doesn’t do any of those things. Because she is right. How could he ever even begin to put it into words, what Steve meant to him, what they meant to each other? How could he ever explain what it’s like to lose your other half? But maybe more importantly, how could he ever deserve to, after everything he’s done?

He doesn’t even realize he’s trembling until Louise sighs his name and pulls him into her arms. “I’ll be right with you the whole time,” she says. “I won’t let go of your hand.”

 

* * *

 

 

Louise makes good on her promise, slipping her hand into Bucky’s flesh one the moment they exit the car outside of the cemetery, and she doesn’t let go, not even when Sam and Natasha approach and introductions are exchanged.

There are, distressingly, Iron Man suits parked alongside every entrance and exit at the cemetery, and a great many more than that parked around the perimeter. Without even really meaning to Bucky jerks on Louise’s hand as if he means to run.

“Relax,” Natasha says in his ear. “They’re unmanned, to keep the paparazzi away.” Bucky must look unconvinced at this, because Natasha huffs and rolls her eyes. “Tony is not going to try and kill you at Steve’s funeral.”

“Oh, so he’ll wait till after, then,” Bucky mutters, wondering if she can hear the hammering of his heart, and annoyed at it, because he’ll be damned if anyone here pegs him as being scared of Tony fucking Stark.

“No one’s killing anyone,” Louise says firmly, and Bucky is content to let her take the lead.

Sharon Carter is the first to take her place alongside the casket - empty, empty, empty, and he’s squeezing Lou’s hand again - and Bucky wonders how he missed the family resemblance the first time. His knees had been halfway up his chest, and he’d been torn between never saying another word to Sam for the rest of his life and his unbearable curiosity of who the hell Steve had just swapped spit with. But now he can see Peggy in her niece, standing straight, her eyes sweeping over the crowd of mourners. They all seem to sit up a little straighter. Not for the first time, Bucky wishes he could’ve had the chance to speak with Peggy again. One of the only other people in the world who understood what a rare treasure Steve Rogers is. Was.

“Who is that?” Louise whispers.

“Her name’s Sharon,” he whispers back. “She’s Peggy’s niece.”

“Is she an Avenger too?”

“How many Avengers do you think there are?” Sam, on the other side of him, lets out half a laugh disguised as a cough. But Louise does not get a chance to respond, because Sharon has begun to speak.

“Most kids my age,” she begins, “heard things like ‘Goodnight, Moon’ or ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ as bedtime stories. Me, I got stories of Captain America knocking out Hydra bases. Everyone in our family sort of felt like he was ours, everyone down to the cat.” This gets a few appreciative chuckles, and the vibranium grinds a bit as Bucky clenches his left hand.

“So when SHIELD told me my next assignment was protection detail for a national icon, and that I was absolutely to tell no one about it, of course, I immediately called my Aunt Peg. She congratulated me on the high profile assignment. And then she started telling me all about Project Rebirth, about the time Captain America threw himself on what turned out to be a dummy grenade. Everyone knows that story. I didn’t get why she was telling it to me, not for a long time. But now I do. So, look, if you’re like I was then, if you’re here to talk about Captain America, then respectfully, get the hell out, please, because the rest of us are here to talk about Steve.”

His head snaps up, and Bucky swears for half a second it really is Peggy up there. Louise hums in agreement next to him, and he squeezes her hand.

“And I still feel bad about lying about who I was,” Sharon admits, “and I don’t remember if I actually apologized for that, so.” She glances at the empty casket. “I’m sorry, Steve.” She’s quiet for a moment, and then her eyes turn back to the crowd. “Aunt Peg’s memory was starting to go at this point, but the stories she could still tell about Steve were amazing. She told me about the things and the people that were important to him.” Her gaze falls on Bucky, and he meets her eyes. “And she told me what it was really like, to fight Hydra. That’s something a lot of us have learned firsthand, even if we never expected to. I’m not going to stand up here and rehash the past. There’s a lot about it I wish I could go back and change. But at the same time I’m glad for it, I’m glad for the time I was able to spend with Steve Rogers. Because not all of us here today were lucky enough to know him before he was Captain America. He made choices not all of us agreed with. _I_ didn’t agree with all of them. But I never once doubted his truth or his sincerity. I’m a better person for knowing him, and I know I’m not the only one.”

Bucky is nodding wordlessly, and Louise is tracing circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

 

* * *

 

Sharon makes a beeline for him once it’s over. Louise has still not let go of his hand, and between her, Grace, Sam, and Natasha, it feels a little bit like, unconsciously or not, they have formed a protective circle around him. Sharon approaches, smiling brilliantly, giving Sam a hug and shaking Natasha’s hand, introducing herself easily to Louise and Grace, and then she finally turns to Bucky.

“You look a lot better than the last time I saw you,” she says. And for a second he thinks maybe she’s just saying that to be nice, but probably not, if she’s Peggy’s family, and so that’s really saying something, because he certainly feels like shit. He just shrugs.

“You spoke wonderfully, Sharon,” Louise is saying, reaching to grasp Sharon’s hand with her free one.

“Thank you. That means a lot, coming from someone else that knew him before.”

Their conversation is interrupted by the event that he’s been half-expecting and half-dreading since the moment he left Wakanda. Tony’s approaching their little group, with a blond woman - Bucky’s seen her on TV, but her name escapes him. The shift in mood feels like a heavy cloud has just passed over the cemetery.

It’s Natasha that steps forward first, greeting the woman with a kiss on the cheek and giving Tony a hug. The tension broken, the blond steps forward towards Bucky, her expression gentle and her hand outstretched. “Hi, Mr. Barnes,” she says. “My name’s Pepper.” Pepper. That was it. “We don’t mean to interrupt,” she says, as Bucky takes her offered hand and gives it a shake, “but Tony wanted to talk to you.”

Seven pairs of eyes all swivel to look at Tony Stark. “Yeah,” he says. “I need to borrow the Terminator for a second.”

Pepper rolls her eyes and turns as if to scold him, but Louise beats her to it. “Not if you’re going to make fun of him, you can’t,” she says firmly. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky sees Sam press his lips together in a poorly concealed grin.

“Lou,” Bucky huffs, disentangling his hand from hers, “it’s fine.” But even so his eyes dart towards Natasha and she gives him a subtle nod in return. Of all of them, she’s the one that knows Tony best.

And that’s how he ends up walking through the cemetery, alone, with Tony Stark.

“So who’s the feisty grandma?” Tony asks, voice tinged with amusement.

“My little sister.”

It’s just a statement of fact, but one that Tony apparently finds sobering all the same. Tony makes a noise of acknowledgment in the back of his throat. “Ross came crying to me, you know, because you were insisting on this.” He gestures vaguely to their surroundings. “I told him you were right. Steve would’ve hated anything more than this. Even this is pushing it.” He sighs, and pushes his sunglasses up to rest on his forehead. “I am sorry about Steve,” he says. “I don’t know what it means coming from me, but there you have it. I had to be here. I did respect him, even if I hardly agreed with him, and I still think of him as my friend.” He laughs humorlessly. “Even if half the time I wanted to grab him by his giant shoulders and shake him until he realized we were living in the real world.”

“But Steve did see the real world. He saw it for exactly what it was. The only difference between him and the rest of us is that he also chose to see what it could be.” He can see Tony scrutinizing him, and the attention makes Bucky uncomfortable. “But sometimes he was a real asshole about it,” Bucky adds. “You’re not wrong there.”

Tony barks out a laugh, and some of the tension evaporates. Some, but not all.

“He respected you, too,” Bucky offers.

“Yeah. We had the chance to talk, after - well, funny how your perspective changes when half the world’s population is wiped out and you’re expected to do something about it.”

“He said to me once that you were a better person than you gave yourself credit for. He hated how it went down in Siberia.”

“It was not his finest moment,” Tony says, and even now there’s an undercurrent of hurt beneath the pithy comment. “Arc reactors aren’t cheap.”

“Do you want me to say I’m sorry? Because I could, but at this point, it kind of feels like an insult.”

“Sorry for what, exactly? For trying to kill me? Tearing apart the Avengers? Murdering my parents?”

“All of it, I guess.”

There’s a long silence. “You said to me that you remembered all of them. Did you mean that? Or were you just saying it because I was about to pop your head off like a grape?”

“I meant it.” The terrifying part had never been what he did remember; it had always been what he didn’t remember, that darkness that lurked on the edge of consciousness.

Tony sighs, agitatedly removes the sunglasses from his forehead and begins to clean them absently on the edge of his suit jacket. “Look, Barnes, here’s where I am at. People who are smarter than me - people with very fancy degrees in psychology and medicine and law say that there’s no way you could be held responsible for Winter Wonderland’s actions. Fine. I can live with that. Here’s my question, though. If you’re as great as Steve made you out to be, how did it take you _seventy_ years to break out of it?”

He has no answer for Tony, because it’s a question he’s never been able to answer for himself. “I’ve asked myself that a lot. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” Tony laughs humorlessly. “Isn’t that how it always goes. Nobody gets the answer they’re looking for.” He lapses into silence again, and then he reaches inside his coat pocket.

Bucky’s hand shoots out and closes hard around Tony’s wrist.

“Seriously?” Tony says, in a low, dangerous voice, his other hand held palm out in a gesture of goodwill.

Bucky jerks back as if burned. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Reflex.”

Because what Tony pulls - very slowly - out of his coat pocket is not a weapon, but rather an envelope, and this he offers to Bucky wordlessly. Bucky takes it and turns it over and then very nearly drops it, because it’s addressed to him, in Steve’s handwriting.

“I don’t know what it says,” Tony says. “It was open like that when I found it. I never read it.”

“I don’t…understand how you have this.”

“Time travel shenanigans.”

“Huh?”

“After you all disappeared, the crew left in Wakanda met up with me in New York. He must’ve written it while everyone was congregating at my tower. When we - won, and everything snapped back into place, the letter was still in my tower, because future-Steve had already written it. At least, that’s how the wizard explained it to me,” he adds, in response to Bucky’s furrowed brow.

“Thank you,” Bucky says softly, though he’s still not totally clear on how this letter even exists, but Tony only shrugs.

“I don’t have the right to keep it from you.”

Bucky tears his eyes away from his name in Steve’s hand and tucks the envelope into his own jacket, and looks up at Tony. “Ross told me you helped decrypt the evidence that proved my innocence. Why?”

“Good question,” Tony answers, and resumes their slowly ambulatory pace, this time back in the direction from which they’d come. Bucky hadn’t even realized they’d stopped walking. “I guess I just thought it would be nice not to carry this around anymore.”

He doesn’t elaborate any further than that, but Bucky thinks he understands anyway.

They rejoin the others, who are watching the two of them carefully and pretending not to. Louise makes no such pretense, immediately seizing hold of Bucky’s hand again as soon as he’s within arm’s reach.

“Was that a ‘we’re cool’ talk?” Sam asks, once Tony and Pepper have said their goodbyes and moved on. Bucky nods.

“Told you he wasn’t going to kill you,” Natasha quips.

“Was it a ‘we’re cool, and also welcome to the Avengers’ talk?” Sam follows up.

“Jesus, no.”

Louise pinches his palm. “Language!”

“God, I love her,” Sam mutters.

“So listen,” Natasha says. “A few of us were going to meet for a few drinks. You want to come?”

It takes him a second to realize she’s inviting him. “What, now?”

“Yes, now. You have other plans?”

“You should go,” Louise says encouragingly, and Bucky opens his mouth to answer but the letter Tony just handed over is pressing against his side like a weight.

“We’ll text you where we end up,” Natasha offers, picking up on his reluctance. “Shuri did teach you how to text, didn’t she?”

He nods, even letting the old man dig slide. “I just - ”

“Do you want somebody to stay with you?” Grace offers politely, even though they all know the answer will be no even before Bucky shakes his head.

“Then I’ll see you back at the house,” Louise says, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek, almost daring him not to come home.

Once they’ve left, he retreats to the old section of the cemetery, so as to not disturb the more recently deceased - and so that he is far from the spot where they are putting Steve’s empty coffin into the ground - and he props himself against one of the old headstones, so worn that he cannot make out the name once carved there.

He holds his hands out in front of him until they stop trembling, and then before he can decide not to go through with it he pulls the envelope from his jacket and removes the letter.

_Bucky -_

_With any luck, it’ll all turn out fine and you won’t ever read this letter and I can burn it and pretend I never wrote it. But I have the feeling that our luck ran out a long time ago, pal. I don’t know exactly what I think might happen over the next few weeks, but it seemed like a good idea to get some of these thoughts down on paper, just in case._

_Back in ‘43, the day after you fell, Peggy said something to me that I didn’t understand. She said that, if I respected you, then I had to respect your choice, that I couldn’t rob you of that choice by blaming myself for what happened to you. I guess it’s more accurate to say that I understood what she was saying, I just thought it was complete bullshit. Until right now that I’m writing this letter, asking you to respect my choice._

_I know it’s not fair, that I’m asking you to be stronger than I ever was or could be, and for that I am sorry. But, and I know this will get me an eyeroll, you always were the stronger out of the two of us. You shouldered a lot, ever since we were kids, looking after me and your family both. I won’t lie, sometimes in these past few years I’ve wished you were with me, watching my six, but I’ve never regretted for a second that you finally got the chance to take it easy, and I hope you don’t regret it either. And I’m just glad I got the chance to join you at least a couple of times._

_If something happens to me, my friends will look out for you, as long as you let them. Try. They’re good people, all of them, and they were good to me when I needed it. Give Louise my love. Buck, I can’t even tell you how glad I am that you two found each other while there was still time. You’ve got a great family. Thanks for sharing them with me._

_And thank you, for everything. I would’ve been dead and buried long before Project Rebirth was a glimmer in anyone’s eye if it wasn’t for you. Everyone always forgets that, but I never have. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself even half as well as you took care of me._

_Love,_

_Steve_

_p.s. yes, I absolutely did make myself cry writing this, and I know you’re crying reading it, don’t even deny it, jerk_

 

* * *

 

 

It’s midafternoon, and so the bar is not dark enough to hide his red-rimmed eyes. Maybe that’s why Sam surprises them all by setting down his beer and pulling Bucky into a brief hug. Sam jerks away just as abruptly and fumbles awkwardly for his beer. “You made it,” he says, sounding a little surprised, though Bucky can’t blame him for that.

“Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse like he hasn’t spoken in days. He’d finished the letter and wept so hard he couldn’t breathe, the torrent of grief only lessening a little when he realized he’d been wrinkling the corner of the paper in his clenched fist. He blinks confusedly at his surroundings, trying to get his bearings; it feels like slept-walked his way to the bar.

The gathered assemblage greets him - there’s Natasha and Sharon, and they’ve been joined by Scott, Clint, and Thor. Natasha has chosen this spot well; just Brooklyn enough to have a lengthy beer list, but just divey enough that in the middle of the afternoon they are unlikely to be noticed by the few others at the bar.

“Get this man a beer,” Scott says to no one in particular, leaning across to clap Bucky on the shoulder. “You look like an IPA kind of guy.”

Bucky stares at him blankly. “What does that mean?”

“Oh. Uh. I don’t know. You just really look like you need a drink.”

His mouth twitches in a humorless smile. No doubt he does.

 

* * *

 

 

When he arrives back at the house, it’s later than he thought it would be and he savors the feeling of doing something as mundane as holding a housekey in his hand and letting himself in. God, Steve would be so happy, and for half a second Bucky swears that if he turns around he’ll see him there, dopey smile on his face.

He enters as quietly as he can, but to his surprise, there is Louise, sitting on the couch knitting to the glow of a lamp on the side table. “Hi,” she says quietly.

“Hey,” he says, shutting the door behind him. “You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?”

“No. I’m an old lady, Bucky. I sleep odd hours. Besides, I’m always restless after a funeral.”

“Grace?”

“She went to bed hours ago. Funerals wear her out.”

He tries to say that it was smart of Grace, to end this day as soon as possible, but the words get caught in the sudden lump in his throat. It’s over. The day is over and they’ve put Steve in the ground. Bucky sways on his feet a little.

“You aren’t drunk, are you?” Louise asks.

"No. Not drunk. Just...tired."

She nods wordlessly and grabs the throw pillow tucked between her side and the armrest, and relocates it to her other side. She pats the empty space next to her invitingly. He hesitates for half a moment then takes the offered spot, resting his head on the pillow tucked against her side. Even with his legs curled, and even though it's a big couch, it's a tight fit. She settles her hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. "You always wanted to cuddle with someone," he remembers.

"It was my right as baby of the family," Louise answers matter of factly. "You would always dump me off of your lap, you big brute."

"And Steve was always too polite to push you off." Once Louise is gone there will be no one left to remember these things. It’ll only be him, with his fragmented and cheap memory.

"You weren’t at the cemetery all this time, were you? You did end with Steve's friends, didn’t you?" His friends, like she's talking about Steve's book club instead of the Avengers.

“Yeah.”

"Good. I like them. They're all very good looking, aren't they? Oh, and they are being nice to you, aren’t they?" This last question she asks in a vaguely threatening tone, like if he answers no she will personally take it upon herself to have a talk with each and every one of them.

“C’mon. They’re fine. They don’t really know me that well anyway.” And now with Steve gone, there is only one person remaining in the world that does. “Don’t go, Lou,” he says, before he can stop himself.

Louise sighs softly, and moves her hand to run her fingers through his hair. “I’m not going anywhere for a good, long while. My big brother, you see, took such good care of us when we were young, and now it’s my turn to return to the favor.”

It doesn’t feel like he ever did a good job; between looking after the girls and looking after Steve, Bucky always felt like he was doing a half assed job of looking after any of them.

“Steve wrote me a letter, Lou,” he whispers. It’s still tucked into his jacket and even now he feels like speaking of it, letting alone removing it, will cause it to crumble into dust too. “That’s what Stark wanted to talk to me about. He had it. I think - I think Steve knew.” Now that the words are out Bucky is sure that Steve had already made his decision by the time he put pen to paper.

“Of course he knew it was a possibility, but he couldn’t have _known_ \- ”

“You don’t get it. He didn’t die in the fighting. He made a deal. He told me.” He lets out a shuddery sob, with no alternative now but to face the truth that there was nothing he could’ve done to save Steve.

Louise’s hand in his hair stills for a moment; even when she resumes running her fingers through it she does not speak. “I was there when Mother died,” she says eventually. “And Jeannie. Becca was gone before I could get there. You know what, Bucky? I don’t think there’s any better way to show you love someone than to stay with them when they’re dying.”

Louise’s fingers in his hair is like a lighthouse in the distance in the storm of his grief, and he gives himself over to it, trembling with silent sobs, until Sarah Rogers whispers a thank you in his ear, and Bucky finally lets himself sleep.

When next he opens his eyes it takes him a moment to orient himself on the floral sofa. Someone tossed a blanket over him at some point in the night. Grace is in the kitchen; he can hear her humming an aimless tune. The coffee maker burbles cheerfully. _Safe_ , supplies his exhausted mind. _Home._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! And so comes an end to my summer of Bucky fanfiction. I have a vague idea of how I want to follow this one up, but that one needs to percolate for a while, and besides it's time for me to switch gears and focus on NaNoWriMo! 
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr if you'd like, at thelightninginme (and definitely hit me up there if you want to see pictures of my 20 pound cat named Bucky which I swear is a coincidence, he had that name before I adopted him)


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